Forum Journal & Forum Focus

New Alliances Promote Kentucky’s Rich Heritage

My family and the other early
settlers who came to Kentucky
were drawn by the beauty of
the land, the richness of the
natural resources, and the
potential for personal and economic
prosperity. And they
developed a rich tradition of
architecture and craftsmanship
that built on our state’s
natural heritage. Today those
are the very assets, the very
strengths, that we find ourselves
placing a renewed value
on 200 years later.

I’ve been interested and
involved in preservation and
growth management issues
from a number of different
perspectives: as president of
an economic development
agency, as secretary of the
tourism cabinet, and as arts
commissioner for Kentucky.
But today my job is to advise
Kentucky’s governor on the
broad policy agenda to move
the state forward and to look
at all the ways all of our various
policy initiatives should
interlink and coordinate in
ways that can truly form a
brighter future for Kentucky.

In Kentucky, thanks to a
constitutional amendment,
we have now the first governor
who’s ever had a chance
to serve two consecutive
terms. It’s been an important
change because short-term
governors who served only
one term really couldn’t deal
with long-term issues very
effectively. I’ve worked for
six governors, and it’s made
a tremendous difference.

Governor Patton made
education his top priority
when he came into office
seven years ago. And he did
that because he looked at the
long-term trends and what the
future of Kentucky will be if
we don’t make tremendous
improvements in quality and
access of education at all levels.
The governor also believes
that we have to take that same
kind of long-term approach
and sustained commitment to
growth management. And it’s
the first time that we’ve really
had a statewide dialogue on
managing growth and trying
to encourage quality growth
across the state.

The governor turned to
smart growth because of its
critical link to economic prosperity
for Kentucky. The connection
between smart growth and economic prosperity is the
best way to build the bridge
between the traditional advocates
for preservation and the
business and the development
community. If we’re truly
going to see the economic
results the state needs, we must
partner with people who are
investing in Kentucky’s future.

In this new economy of
the 21st century, quality of life
matters more than it ever has
before. New high-tech firms
and knowledge-based companies
are going to locate where
the highly skilled workers are.
And those skilled workers will
want to live in areas that are
attractive, clean, and free of
congestion, and where they
can raise a family.

Kentucky, as do many
states, has many advantages
when competing for new jobs
and new industries. We have
some of the most diverse and
beautiful landscapes in the
country. We have unique small
towns dotted across our state,
each with its own rich history.
We have vibrant cities with
strong cultural offerings. We
have a very low cost of
living. We have the lowest
energy costs in the country
and some of the lowest housing
costs. But it’s essential
to protect those assets if our
state will have a successful
economic future.

The states that aren’t
taking the steps to protect
those assets will find themselves
the economic backwaters.
They will be creating
service jobs and back-office
jobs. The businesses that
attract the well-educated
workers will not settle in
the states that aren’t paying
attention to protecting those
quality-of-life assets.

Kentucky’s Smart Growth Task Force

In May of 2001, Governor Patton
appointed a 35-member
Smart Growth Task Force,
a bipartisan committee of volunteers
across the state with
diverse interests. About 65
groups were identified as stakeholders
who could also participate
in meetings and work
teams. The task force organized
its work around five committees,
which attracted more
than 230 members from
around the state. The subject
areas of the work committees
ranged from community design
and revitalization, to economic
development, land preservation,
planning, and transportation.
Over a period of about six months, those work teams met
all across Kentucky.

As part of this Smart
Growth initiative, we asked
the University of Kentucky
to conduct a survey to test
people’s opinions on various
growth management issues in
different parts of the state.
And we learned an important
lesson in that process: In Kentucky,
the concerns about
growth are as diverse as the
regions of our state. In the
urban areas such as Louisville
and Lexington and northern
Kentucky which is just south
of Cincinnati, it’s traditional
sprawl issues. But it’s preservation
of farmland in central
Kentucky and far western
Kentucky, where farmers are
threatened by large chicken
and hog operations. It’s preservation
of natural areas in far
eastern Kentucky where we
have some of the most beautiful
ecological treasures in our
state. And it’s the preservation
of downtowns and neighborhoods
in every community
that Kentuckians care about
as they look to the future.

But we found quickly
that, unfortunately, too few
Kentucky communities have
the tools with which to address
these issues. In fact, nearly
25 percent, or 27 counties in
Kentucky, have no planning
function at all, at either the
city or the county level. Only
27 of our 120 counties have
joint planning units with full
county-wide planning and zoning.
And in many of those
counties where they have comprehensive
planning on the
books, we found decision makers
who truly didn’t understand
the basic tenets of comprehensive
planning and certainly
didn’t understand the
principles of smart growth. So
we found a tremendous lack of
education and training in the
state, even in the areas where
the right laws are on the books.

Meanwhile, Kentucky’s
rate of growth is accelerating
at an astounding pace. From
1982 to 1997, 592,000 acres of
farmland were converted to
urban areas and roads. The
state’s land development is
dramatically out of synch with
its population growth. We’re
showing a slight growth in
population, but our land
development is far outpacing
that growth.

In the fall of 2001, after
about six months of work, the
governor presented the results
of the Smart Growth Task
Force report. The task force
came out with 66 recommendations
ranging from training
and education of local officials
to changing laws to require
more planning at the local
level to providing more technical assistance for local communities to developing significant funding pools for preservation to recommendations to enact historic tax credits.

We began to try to
implement the report’s recommendations
in our legislative
session last spring. Since
smart growth is a controversial
issue in Kentucky, we
tried to take segments of it
that we thought were manageable
and that we could
build political support for.
We passed several bills that
related directly to smart
growth. We passed bills dealing
with the siting of cell
towers and power plants. We
also passed a bill to create
Pine Mountain State Park
in eastern Kentucky to protect
the area from mining
and timbering and other
encroachments. We passed a
comprehensive solid waste
management bill which we
consider part of a broad environmental
growth plan.

However, the bill we
called the Smart Growth Bill
failed to pass. And it’s that
phrase, “smart growth,” that
really turns people off and
makes them think that the
government is trying to interfere
with individual property
rights or trying to mandate
state controls that can override
local controls. The Smart
Growth Bill, which would
have established a state planning
office to give more assistance
to local communities,
scared some legislators to
death. They were convinced
that that was communism.

The other bill that didn’t
pass was historic rehabilitation
tax credits. The bill
would have provided up to a
30 percent state tax credit for
owner-occupied residential
property and for redevelopment
and qualified new construction
in historic districts.
We hope to revive that bill in
the 2003 legislative session. I
think, as much as anything,
that bill got caught up in our
fiscal crisis in Kentucky as in
every other state.

A state tax credit would
really be an important step
forward because it would continue
to build on Kentucky’s
legacy of preservation. Nationally,
Kentucky has the fourth
highest number of entries in
the National Register with
more than 3,100 listings
encompassing approximately
41,000 structures. The tax
credit would build on the federal
programs and would serve
as a catalyst for investments
in neighborhoods and downtown
commercial areas.

We put together a broad
coalition to lobby for the tax
credits, which included Kentucky homebuilders, the Kentucky
Board of Realtors, The
Farm Bureau, Associated
Industries of Kentucky, the
industrial lobby. But our key
supporters obviously were the
Kentucky Heritage Council
and Commonwealth Preservation
Advocates, the preservation
groups that have historically
been so important to
presenting these issues in
Frankfurt. And even though
we were not successful, we
made a lot of progress in
understanding each others’
issues and concerns, from the
development side of the equation
and the preservation
side, and trying to find that
common ground.

The governor is also committed
to doing as much as possible
by executive orders. This
past spring, he directed agencies
to establish design guidelines
and siting criteria for state
buildings; to develop smart
codes that will encourage building
renovation; to use smart
growth principles in school
siting criteria, which is a big
issue in Kentucky as we abandon
so many of our neighborhood
schools. And that’s a
tough one politically because
we really don’t have the authority
from the executive branch
to direct the State Board of
Education to do that, but we’re
doing it anyway, and we’re
going to see how far we get.

We established a brownfields task force with public and private participation, and we directed statewide inventories be prepared, of our cultural and historical assets, our natural assets, and our existing infrastructure throughout the state -- inventories that can be incorporated into our geographic information systems and become the basis for future statewide planning.

In addition to the legislation
and the executive orders,
Governor Patton appointed
an advisory body to serve as a
successor to the Smart Growth
Task Force. This new group,
the Kentucky Progress Commission,
is charged with developing
private support with the
goal to become a free-standing
nonprofit entity that can live
beyond this term and have
independence from any particular
governor. It includes
preservationists and land conservationists,
but also realtors,
developers and local elected
officials.

We realized very early in
this governor’s administration
that the key to promoting
responsible community development
was the revitalization
of historic downtowns. And
while we didn’t call it smart
growth, in 1996 the governor
really began his smart growth
initiative, several years before
he named the task force, by
creating a program called
Renaissance Kentucky. This
program provides communities
with financial and technical
resources to revitalize and
restore their downtowns.
Since its creation, Renaissance
Kentucky has channeled more
than $72 million into efforts in
now 73 cities.

Forming New Alliances

We’ve learned some valuable
lessons in Kentucky. We’ve
lost some battles and we’ve
won some battles. I think the
most important lesson is that
we have to form new alliances
if we’re going to convince a
broad cross-section of citizens
that we must act now to
preserve and protect our natural
and our built heritage, and
if we expect to have public
policy that ensures a strong
economic future. We can no
longer afford to have our
preservation and conservation
interests seen as being at odds
with our economic interests
because they are vitally linked.

One of my previous jobs,
as I mentioned, was secretary
of the tourism cabinet. And
I’ve been in some meetings
where the preservation and
tourism and arts community
were in the same room with
the transportation officials,
and you didn’t want small children
in the same room. It was
not a pleasant atmosphere.
These were not agencies
where there was a great deal
of mutual trust. There was
not a great deal of understanding
of each others’ missions
and responsibilities. But today
in Kentucky, not only have we
reached a point where these
agencies are working together,
but what they are doing in
Kentucky for us is a model for
other states to follow.

But in all of this, it’s
absolutely clear that in every
state, preservation must be a
player. And you must be a
partner when issues affecting
the future of the state are
addressed. In Kentucky, we
talk about having the fourth
highest number of listings in
the register. But in the end, it’s
not the numbers, it’s the people
that will make a difference.
It’s not enough for preservation
advocates to get together
to tell each other what a good
job we’re doing. We must talk
to economic development
planners, to local elected officials,
to members of planning
and zoning boards at the local
level, business leaders, and
chambers of commerce.

And it’s vital that we act
now. There are decisions
being made today in every
community across this country
that are affecting the
future of our children and our
grandchildren. And those
decisions are going to determine
whether or not those
next generations actually
have the choice of remaining
close to their roots where they
can nurture their heritage
while also enjoying economic
prosperity and a quality of life.

As preservation advocates,
each of us must never let
our elected officials forget that
in the end, government is not
about programs or policies or
buildings or task forces. Those
are all a means to an end.
Government is about the lives,
the hearts, and the minds of
the people that we serve.
And we must together build
a future that will give every
opportunity possible for our
people to live the lives that
they want and deserve.

The Preservation Leadership Forum of the National Trust for Historic Preservation is a network of preservation leaders — professionals, students, volunteers, activists, experts — who share the latest ideas, information, and advice, and have access to in-depth preservation resources and training.